goodie Good Friday

Enjoyed a Good Friday with a holiday for the campus since it's Spring Break week.

Discovered in the morning that the Earthlink DSL we had ordered was finally activated, so I giddily set off to the get the technology up and running. Though Yahoo is cheaper by a couple of dollars, Earthlink lets you use the mail server for your email to send mail rather than mess with some dumb sbc setting. I started going through picture blogs. The pages loaded so fast it makes you dizzy. Well, I did have dial up modem before. But it will mean that I either look for more websites to surf or that my internet time will be cut to a fourth of what it was. Hmm...maybe I'll actually go to bed earlier.

D came over at 3 to check out the Preciouses or maybe that's Precii and to help in my first solo try of making Ninong's kamoteng kahoy recipe, which is simultaneously fabulously delicious and ridiculously easy to make. Certainly way easier than making flan. But like most Filipino deserts, we'll only be making this stuff for parties. Ingredients include 2 cans coconut milk, condensed milk, 1 stick of butter, 3 eggs, along with the kamoteng kahoy (casava). Yeah, ain't your every day kind of fare. I can see how Ninong can just make this stuff with his eyes closed.

The fiance arrives from work and says he got a job offer at another, better, larger, more established Photofinishing place. It's a bit of a pay cut, but it cuts his commute to minutes instead of hours, and the combined stress of working at a sinking ship would disappear. As much as he complains about his current work, there was still some hesitation. Because change is hard and the body can tolerate a lot of pain and would rather tolerate the pain we know and understand than to put ourselves in a new place that might overall be considerably less pain and better for us, but it's new pain and we hate change. If you've been down and out long enough, pleasure, success, happiness can be construed as pain.

But fortunately the fiance has a community of folks who can slap him out of it. Including D, who told him, which is it going to be, "standing at the altar, unemployed and wondering where your next job will be OR standing at the altar as a fully employed man? Don't make me have to slap you at the altar." I've come to realize that as it does take a community to raise a child, it also takes a community to keep a marriage together. Thus today, the fiance is off to pick up his offer letter. In addition, I reminded him to remember all those days he was thinking of quitting anyway. So better to quit into a better place, than the unemployment line, which we did before, and we're not doing it again if we don't have to, especially with October rolling around.

Additionally, we booked the photographer for the wedding. Mr. Sung took the photos at his sister's wedding. Loved his work, but he only speaks Korean. And so, we went straight back to the wedding invitation list to make sure we had a couple of Korean fluent friends on the list.

Lastly on the wedding front, heading down next weekend to take a peek at the wedding dress. Geez, I can barely say it's MY wedding dress. I can only call it THE wedding dress. Hmmm....I'll work on that. Also will pick up the barong tagalogs C kindly searched all of Manila for, and returned in her balikbayan boxes, for the groomsmen and my dad. With additional special treats for all of our sponsors. (I'm not saying what those are).

D's mom calls her from her brand new cell phone asking when we're coming. Momz (which I call D's mom) I think was just showing off to her friends how high tech she is. Decided to pass up on the camera phone for whichever model had the largest buttons and largest font on the screen.

We get major parking karma and park right across the street. Momz was extremely delighted to see us. Since D is an only child, I think Momz had adopted us as D's siblings. We still don't really know anyone there by name, just by face. The food table is filled with veggies and seafood. Love the ukoy, and the laing, and the banana hearts coconut dish. And I wouldn't mind learning how to make the adobong pusit.

The forlorn looking saints dressed in black with gold trim arranged in the front. Though we were trying to figure out two things: 1) what's up with the statue of the rooster and 2) which saint is the one carrying a quill pen and a book. I was guessing that the rooster was either there as a representation of sari-manok, or as a symbol of the rooster that crowed three times to mark the signs of Jesus' betrayal. But you know, Filipinos are just obsessed with roosters. Still haven't figured out the answer to number 2.

The people reading the Pasyon get older and older. The younger generation hesitates to join in because they "don't know Tagalog" or can't pronounce the words. Then again, you can sing in Tagalog the way U.S. singers sing their songs in other languages by simply singing syllables. Besides, it's the Pasyon, you can read the bible and get the translation from there. But this is the state of many of these regional associations. Even the current immigrant generation finds less and less need to join these clubs. I briefly thought about finding out what it would be like to stick it out for the entire reading 14 hours. Then again maybe I'll work my way up to it, try it for an hour next year.